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South-London trio Rameses III make their musical home in that imagined community where English folk rubs shoulders with America's desert balladry. Thus the album slowly unfurls with acoustic guitars and Spencer Grady's reluctant voice subtly blended with a desolate, widescreen ambience. On songs like Montague Hill, a clear parallel to the likes of Dakota Suite can be drawn and thus, by default, the works of Marks Kozelek and Eitzel, albeit tempered with whispery, British reserve. Even in this mini-album format the funereal pace of the five vocal tracks struggles to maintain the interest factor and the two short instrumentals show an experimental nature that the band would do well to explore on a full-length.

Matt Dornan
CWAS #12 - Summer 2003

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